Now that the Spanish gaming market has, finally, opened it’s time for gaming affiliates to get serious about marketing to Spaniards on their home turf. That means getting a hand on Spanish social media networks that go far beyond Facebook and Twitter.
Like most other parts of the Western world, the people in Spain are absolutely crazy about social media. According to a recent posting from social media news blog Four-Point-Oh Spaniards are some of the top social media users on the planet.
The Spanish rank in the top ten for Twitter use and a whopping 16 million of them are on Facebook. That’s pretty impressive for a country of only 47 million people. As much as the Spanish like the big international social media brands, they also like their own homegrown networks.
If you’re looking to tap into that lucrative Spanish gaming market, here are a few of the social networks you need to familiarize yourself with.
Tuenti
Tuenti is Spanish for identity and it’s one of the biggest social networks in Spain. With as many as 13 million users, Tuenti is sometimes referred to as the Spanish Facebook. Just take one look at it and you’ll know why.
Beyond the physical resemblance, Tuenti is quite a bit different from Facebook. For starters, Tuenti isn’t built for sharing links and content so much as it is for true social interaction like chat. It’s an invitation-only site and each member is given only 10 invites to share with friends.
Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of Tuenti. Thanks to some pretty aggressive privacy policies and an agreement not share user information with search engines, the site flies well below the radar.
For more on what makes Tuenti so popular in Spain, and so different from Facebook, we recommend you check out, How Tuenti Held Off Facebook in Spain with Better Privacy by Laura Parkinson on PBS.org.
Other Social Networks Popular in Spain
These networks aren’t Spanish, but they’re all very popular there and worth checking out.
Habbo – This Finnish based site (the word means “hotel”) is part Facebook and part Second Life, this network uses animated avatars divided up into nationalities by various hotels. There’s a large Spanish presence, though most of the users are teenagers.
Fotolog – This photo-sharing site is popular across the Spanish speaking world. Though most of its users hail from South America is does support both Basque and Catalan languages.
A Word About Language
If you don’t speak Spanish yourself, you may wonder if there’s a difference between the Spanish language spoken in Spain and the kind spoken in Mexico. The differences are very similar to the differences between UK English and American English.
Catalan is the main dialect spoken in Spain and it’s much more formal than Mexican Spanish. If you’re hiring a Spanish language freelancer to cover this market, you’ll want to be certain they know the difference, too.
Do you have any experience with Spanish Social Media? Tell us about it on our SEO Forum.